Saturday, January 11, 2014

The State and Business

The only force capable of preserving a thing is the force that created it.  For this reason it is not a good idea to buy a business, but stat your own.  If a business is sold, the force, the creativity of the founder, is gone.

This is true for a corporation as well.  The people who founded the corporation are the ones who sustain it, but a corporation is organized around a mission, as opposed to a company that is organized around the genius of the founder.

In the USA, governments at the federal, state and local level are all corporations, formed by a consensus and maintained by regular "shareholder meetings."  Within the very corporation articles, the constitutions, are the means to change the constitutions, indeed, the means to liquidate and end the nations and governments.  One would presume any present system would be liquidated to bring in a new one, except even such a radical change can be effected without liquidation.

But with a Government corporation, which necessarily restricts government actors, the government actors have a incentive to overthrow those restrictions for freedom to act.  Au courant is the NSA doing its own thing in spite of the laws.  In essence, it is the work of state actors to destroy the Constitution, by arrogating powers, sought and unsought, unto themselves.  

It is the work of citizens to defend the constitution.  Every time "the People" (represented by state actors pursuing personal, private gain) take a legislative action, exercise executive power, or bring a case to court, they are attempting to destroy the Constitution of the United States.  They want something beyond what is provided in the Constitution.

When the vast majority tries to vote down bailouts, or wars, or stadiums, we get them anyway.  This was anticipated by founders who made sure we had the recall initiative, jury nullification, and refusal to cooperate (fifth amendment).  

When any agent of the state approaches you, to the degree you refuse to cooperate is the degree you defend the constitution.  If their approach is in some way a violation, or at least you are obliging the agent to provide just cause for the action.

People find criminal defense attorneys objectionable.  Why?  In essence they require the state prove its case within constitutional bounds, for the state has no legitimacy outside those bounds.

"Show me the warrant, show me the law, show me the probable cause...."  That should be the first reply when contacted by the agents of the state.  And if this results in a beating, hope someone is videotaping it.

The United States Congress renews the corporation of the United States every two years by funding it.  They may at any time either dissolve that corporation and end it, or hold a convention to change it.


Copernicus:
ALTHOUGH THERE ARE COUNTLESS MALADIES that are forever causing the decline of kingdoms, princedoms, and republics, the following four (in my judgment) are the most serious: civil discord, a high death rate, sterility of the soil, and the debasement of coinage. The first three are so obvious that everybody recognizes the damage they cause; but the fourth one, which has to do with money, is noticed by only a few very thoughtful people, since it does not operate all at once and at a single blow, but gradually overthrows governments, and in a hidden, insidious way.
Jefferson:
And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
Let's peacefully shut it down, start over.  Hit that reset button, take it away from the bankers.

Start over, without the violence.

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Friday, January 10, 2014

Mish and Fifty Slides

Mish Shedlock is presenting an excellent little study on inflation and deflation.  Mish is unique, or at least seminal, in noting that "credit" falling within the definition of money is destroying everyone's prescriptive and predictives models.  Mish is within the Austrian school, but there are those, wrong, who disagree with him, or at least fail to comprehend his point.  This will help people understand.

Maldefinition of money is creating a pretense in which people work at nothing productive and are promised that which cannot be delivered, to the extremely evil end where are all denied the good of what would be other's contributions, absent this pretense.

But such a definition, such a perniciously malicious polity cannot be credited.  But I think it is exactly what is in play.

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Rents And Rent Seeking

Rents are the goal of the powers that be, to wield power over dependents, dependents who are actually paying you to be dependent.

When we say rent we think real estate, since that is the most pure form.  A polity that offers an opportunity for the few to lord over the many is a philosophy welcomed high and low, for as we see from the first recorded instance, 1 Samuel 8, it is natural for most people to assent to kings, "to fight their battles for them."  Those who find themselves kings may be astonished to what degree they can wield any power they seek, and then even more astonished at what unsought powers they are given. The amazing revelation is that the low are as happy with the polity as the high.  The group that least wanted revolution in Russia were the peasants and serfs.  As Eric Hoffer pointed out in True Believer, it is those close to the top or very recently where pushed form the top that want revolution.  Never do they really want any change, they just want to be the ones in charge.



Now the problem arises when people, for whatever reason, want to get to the heights as rent seekers, and find their way blocked.  Then comes revolutions, most unwelcome in results.

Rent seeking is any attempt to get into that splendid position.  IPR is a lite version of this, as are many other mechanisms

All wars are over rents, essentially land.  Religious wars,  reformation is rents.

Watch out for the new idea.  Or, or perhaps just the new idea of a standing army, which inevitalby leads to the military takeover.

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Thursday, January 9, 2014

Blame The Black Guy Goes Vicious

It used to be funny how they "blamed the black guy" when laying at Obama's feet Bush's criminal policies, but now it is getting lethal.  For Gates to write a book differentiating Bush and Obama when there is zero difference in policy, and claim somehow those who died mostly on Bush's watch died in vain because of Obama is truly a new low.

Pretending Obama is in charge when Presidents are clearly puppets is fine, but then to make this viciously unfair caricature of him is to attempt a blood libel.

Politics have gone horrible here.

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Wednesday, January 8, 2014

How The NSA Kills Exports

We have a vast spy-system, far more reaching than anything the East German Stasi ever accomplished, generally for the purposes of NSA clerks being able to check out your girlfriend.  They did nothing to see 9-11, the Boston Bombings or the Kenya Mall slaughter coming.  Or the LAX shooting or the Mall shooting recently. And have enough to keep every politician and judge live in fear of criticizing the "security apparatus" much as the Roman Senate lived in fear of Caligula's security apparatus.

But then there is the other problem.  IBM is dying for accepting their products have built in spy features, required by the NSA.
I’d warned about its impact at the time [read.... US Tech Companies Raked Over The Coals In China]. Snowden’s revelations started hitting in May. Not much later, the Chinese security apparatus must have alerted IT buyers in government agencies, state-owned enterprises, and major independent corporations to turn off the order pipeline for sensitive products until this is sorted out. As Mr. Loughridge’s efforts have shown, it’s hard to explain any other way that hardware sales suddenly collapsed by “40%, 50%” in China, where they’d boomed until then.
Nice!  The one thing in which we lead the world, we are now failing.

And the one hope is open source software, Linux, in a country the drives our best to death for "violating" "intellectual property rights."  Will the ironies never cease?

And now we learn the NSA intercepts deliveries of computers to turn them into spy-pods.
LONDON (AP) -- A German magazine lifted the lid on the operations of the National Security Agency's hacking unit Sunday, reporting that American spies intercept computer deliveries, exploit hardware vulnerabilities, and even hijack Microsoft's internal reporting system to spy on their targets.
Well, that means the delivery service is complying with the NSA, since all shipments are tracked all of the time.  They necessarily know shipments are diverted to be messed with, and why.  How soon will we here that Fedex or UPS becomes persona non grata in multiple countries.

Does anyone at the Federal level think through policies?

We have a tale of two judges, one that says there is NSA overreach, and another that says, no, it is the "counterpunch to terrorism."  We can get an idea of which judges the NSA has the goods on by their rulings.

China booted Google when it became clear that Google was a USA Intel Operation.

Here is the problem:  this ability of the State to compel compliance is degenerate.  The only viable means of society and polity is voluntary association.  Let the state ask private companies for info, but the private company can decide yes or no.  Today, you cannot say no.  You cannot even quit if you do not want to help the state do wrong.

The Silicon Valley is full of people who are free to create anything they want as long as it advances state surveillance.  Ironic.

The oldest and largest political entity on planet earth and in history also has the best intelligence network in the world.  It is called the Catholic Church.  It's diplomats are considered the best in the game.  And it is entirely voluntary association.

It is a good model for government.

We need a strict separation of business and state.

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Tuesday, January 7, 2014

BBC Series Messengers from Moscow

About 20 years ago the BBC put out a series on the rise and fall of the Communist States, which is looking rather prophetic.  In the case of the USSR, we have the overthrow a king, then the overthrow a democracy, and then unrelenting horrors for 70 years and the the long history of self-justification.

The USSR conflicts with China, the geo-politics, Castro's Cuba, and then the regret by the players over so much suffering and death for no good results...

Of special interest to me is the role of Carter (our greatest president) and the neutron bomb... and the beginning of the end...  Soviet exceptionalism and the invasion of Afghanistan...

And then the decision to pull the plug and not fight force with force but unilateral disamrament and dissolution of the military state, and the military pushing back.

One parallel that is missing is what the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster in the Kiev did to Soviet confidence.  The Fukushima disaster is the USA's Chernobyl, with Japan as tied into USA and the Ukraine was to the Soviet Union at the time fo the disaster.

The last 20 minutes of the series is the USAs next 20 years.  If we are lucky.

The last lines on the USSR of this series are an exact critique of USA today...

Here is China today:

A multi-element perspective means working out measures that suit local conditions and striving for a sound regional environment in an active and well-advised way. In Northeast Asia, the priority is to maintain peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula - efforts should be made to restart the Six-Party Talks - and the establishment of a free trade area covering China, Japan and the Republic of Korea. In Southeast Asia, on the basis of taking into full consideration regional diversity, efforts will be made to hasten interconnectivity by establishing a new maritime "Silk Road" and the Trans-Asian Railway and properly handling disputes in the South China Sea. In Central Asia, the focus will be on strengthening the strategic partnership with Russia, establishing a Silk Road economic belt and enhancing the role of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. To the west, the focus will be on strengthening strategic coordination and pragmatic cooperation with India, and the construction of the BCIM (Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar) economic corridor and the China-Pakistan economic corridor.

Hotheads on either side can excite the elevate the hotheads on another side.

A solution:  replicate a Hong Kong from Urumqi to Zharkent.


This is fascinating recent history, that informs us today.

A side note, for those who advance the argument the Soviet Union was created by western capitalist forces as a bogeyman to keep the West in line will find many instances of support here, if inadvertant.


The quality of the video is terrible, but worth enduring for the content.  Four parts...

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Africa And Agriculture

Interesting developments out of Africa where some farmers are using microscopic bugs as pesticide... exporting bugs that eat bugs.  this is nothing new,  such a using ladybugs to eat aphids...we need to reduce costly pesticides,  which is good for workers, environment, finances....

The is a profound but subtle difference between cooperating with what nature intended and frustrating the natural course.

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Monday, January 6, 2014

Free Market Homes

In a free market, anyone could have a home like this.  Bravo to the architects...

outdoor-house-plan-with-interior-courtyard-and-rooftop-garden-1.jpg

-isms like capitalism and communism are popular because the have have and have nots, and everyone thinks they will be above the line and be a have....

But a free market allows everyone to get what they want, so I may think this house is wonderful, but you may have other ideas.  Point is, both can get what we want.

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Free Ty Warner

I cite Ty Warner in my book, an exceptionally good man, with the skill of turning a fad into a mania, a man who was probably the first small business billionaire.

He had so much money coming in that he was buying such properties as the Four Seasons resort in New York City, with cash.  He placed $100 million or so, in one of very many placements with the UBS Swiss bank which decided to finger customers secretly to save their own skins.

Here is the problem.  Once you plead "guilty" as a tactical matter, and then the feds shift the game, if you go back and change your plea, given the new rules, it looks very bad, and the powers that be make an extraordinary example of you.  This is a complex but common example of the lawlessness we live under.

Warner tried to set the situation right, no doubt calculating that no matter how bad the fines, since he normally gives it away anyway, and he's paid over a billion in taxes anyway, what's a hundre millions in back taxes and fines more?

They want to imprison him.  And here is some more info...  He deserves a pass....

Richard Pryor got into tax problems too...  listen to the 3rd or so bit...  (NB: waterfront saltiness)



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Sunday, January 5, 2014

Used Clothes Export Trade

What happens to those clothes you donate to Goodwill?  Here is another in the NPR series on what happens to used clothes overseas.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/12/10/247362140/the-afterlife-of-american-clothes

When you donate clothes to a charity, the charity in all cases pays people to sort them out by grade and season and purpose. Next the charity has already auctioned off the supply of each category, some sent to upscale used clothing stores, some off to foreign lands at the direction of exporters, and some diverted to the salesroom floor for local purchase, where you can pop some tags, if only $20 in your pocket. In this way you used clothes either clothe the poor locally, or worldwide, where some revenue makes it back to the charity to do its work.

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Taxing Marijuana

State officials here anticipate that marijuana sales will generate some $67 million in annual tax revenue.
Read more at http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/#KK3SHYiSz9D0w4y7.99


One great delusion in the legalizing of marijuana is the state will collect more taxes.  Nonsense.  The illegal dope trade is already taxed at the maximum.  This is how it works:

A drug dealer is bringing in $50,000 a month in cash.  He cannot store it up for fear of being robbed, he cannot bank it for fear of questions as to source.  He cannot use his money.

Therefore he opens a pizzeria or some such, any cash biz will do.  Heck, a laundromat or a parking lot would work.  He has some $5000 a month in sales.  He declares $55,000 a month, 50k is the dope money laundered as pizza sales, plus the legitimate $5000.

He pays taxes on the $55,000 at 30%, so he gives the tax man $22,000 in taxes, and so he has $33,000 free and clear, to spend as he wants, all nice and legal.  Paying taxes is just a cost of business.  Also, the more he pays out in bribes, etc, the less he pays in taxes, so corruption is built into this system.

(As an aside, there are many people who only see the pizzeria and the owners income and say "Gee, I will open one too!" not understanding the dope dealing dimension.)

Two problems: either the underground dope will go legit as in Colorado and Washington netting no more income, or the legit biz taxes are so high the underground continues, like illegal cigarette sales.  Probably a combo of both.  Legalizing dope will not increase revenues.  The State is hooked on dope taxes already.

And as an aside to Mish's article on the topic, which I highly recommend for an aspect of how the world works, he quotes:

Afghanistan, long the world’s main heroin supplier, has seen its total area of poppy seed plantations explode to 516,000 acres - a 36 percent increase from 2012, according to the report, released on Wednesday.
Read more at http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/#KK3SHYiSz9D0w4y7.99


Again, not true.  Afghans produce opium, a lovely natural drug that starts and ends light and is a cheap and plentiful palliative, traded worldwide as medicine for 3500 years.  Heroin is a pointless redesign of opium of German origin a century or so ago.  Don't blame the Afghans for heroin, and they should be praised for growing a crop of such critical need.  Afghans produce a good thing, the middlemen turn it into something evil.

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